Thursday, 1 October 2009

Fruit or Vegetable Conundrum

When I first bought the Amazing Sticker Book one of the activities I'd imagined doing with L was classifying fruits and vegetables. One night I got to work putting all of the stickers on cardboard backings and cutting them out. I thought I'll just check on a couple to see if they are actually classified as fruits or vegetables. WELL little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Scientifically speaking according to botanists a fruit is anything that has seeds. So this makes many of our well loved vegetables technically fruits!

“To really figure out if a tomato is a fruit or vegetable, you need to know what makes a fruit a fruit, and a vegetable a vegetable. The big question to ask is, DOES IT HAVE SEEDS?If the answer is yes, then technically, you have a FRUIT. This, of course, makes your tomato a fruit. It also makes cucumbers, squash, green beans and walnuts all fruits as well. VEGETABLES such as, radishes, celery, carrots, and lettuce do NOT have seeds (that are part of what we eat) and so they are grouped as vegetables.”Read more: http://vegetablegardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/fruit_or_vegetable_#ixzz0SgDdoUWr

Of course in the culinary world the classifications are completely different. So I'm thinking where do I start. My daughter isn't even two! Do I really want her to go to school telling the teacher that a cucumber and pepper are actually fruits? No. I took the easy way out and decided we'd just look at and name them all and leave the classification to someone more qualified in these matters ; )

Silly mommy! When we got to the aubergine(eggplant) L asked "what is this?" so trying to be smart since we are moving to Canada I said it's an eggplant. L replies "oh, is it like an aubergine?". Hmm I think this goes into the ever growing outsmarted by a toddler category!!

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About Me

Welcome! Thanks for visiting.
Here you will find a record of our adventures in Homeschoooling, Montessori,natural learning and exploring nature.
I am a mother to one lovely 7 year old girl and one gorgeous cheeky 3 year old boy living on the west coast of Canada.